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The silent genocide of South Africa's white farmers continues, generally unremarked upon by the Western media.
As Wikipedia helpfully explains in its usual 'master of understatement' tone:
The South African farming community has suffered from attacks for many years.[1] The vast majority of the victims have been white farmers, with claims of death tolls of up to 3,000 (February 2009) cited in the media.[2] The age of those killed range from as old as 87 years to young infants. Genocide Watch has stated that these attacks constitute early warning signs of genocide against Boers and has criticised the South African government for its inaction on the issue, pointing out that the murder rate for them ("ethno-European farmers" in their report) is four times that of the general South African population.[3][4] Human Rights Watch, however, states that the term "farm attacks" (plaasmoorde in Afrikaans, farm murders) is misleading, as it suggests the presence of an organised campaign, rather than simply increased crime rates, and has criticised the South African government for giving the issue too much attention at the expense of the rights of other South Africans, such as farm labourers.[5]
It's been going on for many years now, yes - since about 1994, I believe. It is impossible to prove or disprove whether or not the campaign is organised - the South African police are now so corrupt and ineffective it may well be another example proving they're not fit for purpose.
However, it may well not. I think over 3,000 deaths in 15 years, most accompanied by the most horrific, unthinkable violence and brutality, is worthy of a second thought or at least some comment.
If these had been white-on-black racist murders in a Western city, I'm sure the editors of this article and the media at large would agree with me.
To say that the term 'Plaasmoorde (farm murders)' is misleading is nonsense; I personally find the term 'Human Rights Watch' misleading, because it implies that everyone has certain inalienable rights and not just people who aren't of European descent.
The fact of the matter is, whether these murders are just individual expressions of revenge or an orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing, it would be very convenient for the South African government if the white farmers and Boers did disappear.
After all, given their abject failure to run the country in any way even resembling basic competence, they have to blame someone for the absurd decline in living standards and the abject failure of the 'Rainbow Nation' ideal.
The white farmers seem, ominously, to fit the bill. How long before Zuma, should he win the coming election, institutes Mugabe-style land grabs? He has to keep his supporters happy and on-side somehow, and I don't think his running of the country is going to quite fit the bill.
Better instead to give the most violent the nicest houses and the most acres and let them do the rest.
Many in the West still have prejudices against the Boers and other white South Africans; not many seem to realise that they didn't use South Africa as their personal playground, but ran a successful, First World nation - the only one Africa has ever seen, and the way things are going, will ever see.
It is estimated that one quarter of Boers live below the poverty level; many face huge and insurmountable discrimination and the threat of violence daily just to keep what their families have built and owned for generations and live in their own country.
The world must listen to their plight before it is too late.
Sarah, Maid of Albion has news on the latest brutal Plaasmoorde in South Africa:
Sadly I have again had to update the running total of white South African farmers murdered in the hidden genocide following the killing of a 63 year old farmer and his 60 year old wife at their farm in Boschkop.
The total now stands at 3,043, although there may be more given the secrecy surrounding these killings.I also have an update on the slaying of Basie and Mary Venter at their farm in Bloemfontein last week. The authorities are now saying that the killings appear to have been muti related. That is to say that human body parts were taken for us in tribal medicine.Given that the harvesting of body parts did not disqualify victims from being counted within earlier genocides, I see no reason not to include Mr and Mrs Venter as victims of the South African genocide.
It should not be forgotten that, for the medicine to most effective, muti killings require that organs and body parts are removed whist the victim is still conscious. There is no reason to doubt that this mas the fate of this elderly couple.
And a follow up:
The Editor of Reformatorisch Dagblad, a Dutch language news site, had provided me with a link to to the news story which they are running today covering the killings which I posted about yesterday.
Translated to English, the details are as follows:
BOSCHKOP, Pretoria, South Africa, April 11 2009 – A Dutch immigrant couple who went to South Africa in 1982 to run a dairy farm, was murdered on Easter Friday, April 10 2009. The farmer, 63-year-old Johannes van den Bosch, was bludgeoned to death while milking the cows early that morning.
His wife Jacobi van den Bosch-Griep, 60, was stabbed to death inside their homestead. Their son-in-law T Schinkel who lives in nearby Randburg, found the murdered couple.
The couple were members of the Reformed Church in Pretoria. They had twelve children - three live in The Netherlands.
Police spokesman Johannes Jaftha told the South African Press Association on Friday-afternoon that the farmer showed 'very severe bludgeoning marks' to the skull and face, and that the farm wife 'showed stab wounds in the upper body'.
Both died at the scene of the crimes, he said. The motive is unknown: it could not be determined if anything was stolen from the homestead.
It's not known who would be looking after the couple's prized cattle herd over the Easter weekend. Milk cattle suffer terribly if they don't get milked exactly on time.
Prayers were said in several Reformed churches in The Netherlands when the news spread among the religious community here, amongst others in Scherpenzeel, Rhenen and Uddel.
Showing posts with label Ethnic Cleansing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethnic Cleansing. Show all posts
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Thursday, 9 April 2009
New Revelations of KLA Atrocities in Kosovo
The BBC has released the findings from a report it conducted into civilian casualties and mistreatment in Kosovo, both before and after the conflict.
It confirms claims that the KLA, a violent, criminally backed terrorist organisation, abducted, severely mistreated and in many cases killed ordinary civilians.
Both Serbs and Roma were ethnically cleansed from certain areas, and ethnic Albanian political rivals were also tortured and killed.
Many of the abuses inflicted on non-Muslims and non-Albanians by the KLA are virtually unheard of in the West - during the 1999 Kosovo War a careful black and white image of the 'bad Serbs' and 'good Kosovars' was constructed by the media.
Some reports suggest that the Western media was more biased and centrally controlled than that coming out of Belgrade, because the reporters had to embed themselves with NATO and do as they were told in order to remain.
Here's what the BBC found:
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.
Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.
This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.
Mr Thaci said he was aware that individuals had "abused KLA uniforms" after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts.
He added that such abuse was "minimal".
Predictable. The witness testimonies, including those from Albanians, contradict him:
The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal.
A former prisoner of the KLA, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who was held in a KLA prison in Kukes, northern Albania, agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. His family are terrified for his life.
"They ill-treated people in the corridor," he says. "They also came into the rooms in groups of five or six to question us. And they used knives, guns, and automatic rifles."
His testimony confirms that people of different ethnic backgrounds were kept there, including Serbs.
He told the BBC: "When a person is mistreated... he cries out 'oh mother' in his own language.
"The nights were very quiet, so you could hear them crying out... while they were being beaten, or afterwards."
Sources in Kukes suggest that up to 18 prisoners held at the camp were killed.
Just across the border, in Prizren, in western Kosovo, Brankica Antic lights a candle for her husband Zlatko.
A Kosovo Serb, she says he was abducted in July 1999 in Prizren by men in KLA uniforms - six weeks after the end of the war, when Nato-led peacekeepers were well established.
At the Monastery of the Holy Archangel near Prizren, candles are lit for loved ones according to the Serbian Orthodox tradition.
Candles are lit either on the top shelf for the living, or the lower, for the dead. Brankica still lights her candles for Zlatko on the top.
"We always light candles for their health and well-being, and we will continue to do so unless and until their bodies are found, and we know for a fact that they are gone," she says.
Zlatko is one of about 400 Kosovo Serbs who were abducted at the end of the war, and are still missing, according to Family Associations of the Missing in Serbia.
Around 150 are still missing from the war period.
A further 1,500 Kosovo Albanians are still missing from wartime, when Serb security forces carried out many, well-documented atrocities against the majority Albanian population.
Hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves in Serbia. Our investigation shows that KLA fighters, too, were guilty of serious human rights abuses.
That's right, who would have thought that a violent terrorist group like the KLA, backed by gangsters and drug money, would do such a thing?
Many commentators have been highlighting these allegations for a long time, but finally, after ten years, the BBC admits the truth - this conflict was far from black and white, and the good guys, the underdogs, actually turn out to be the villains after all.
I welcome this report, but much more needs to be done to highlight the current plight of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, and work towards a solution which sees at least the Serb-majority areas become part of Serbia.
It confirms claims that the KLA, a violent, criminally backed terrorist organisation, abducted, severely mistreated and in many cases killed ordinary civilians.
Both Serbs and Roma were ethnically cleansed from certain areas, and ethnic Albanian political rivals were also tortured and killed.
Many of the abuses inflicted on non-Muslims and non-Albanians by the KLA are virtually unheard of in the West - during the 1999 Kosovo War a careful black and white image of the 'bad Serbs' and 'good Kosovars' was constructed by the media.
Some reports suggest that the Western media was more biased and centrally controlled than that coming out of Belgrade, because the reporters had to embed themselves with NATO and do as they were told in order to remain.
Here's what the BBC found:
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.
Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.
This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.
Mr Thaci said he was aware that individuals had "abused KLA uniforms" after the war, but said the KLA had distanced itself from such acts.
He added that such abuse was "minimal".
Predictable. The witness testimonies, including those from Albanians, contradict him:
The BBC News investigation also studies claims that some of those held in Albania were killed for their organs, and that physical evidence gathered by UN investigators in Albania was destroyed by the International War Crimes Tribunal.
A former prisoner of the KLA, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who was held in a KLA prison in Kukes, northern Albania, agreed to speak to us on condition of anonymity. His family are terrified for his life.
"They ill-treated people in the corridor," he says. "They also came into the rooms in groups of five or six to question us. And they used knives, guns, and automatic rifles."
His testimony confirms that people of different ethnic backgrounds were kept there, including Serbs.
He told the BBC: "When a person is mistreated... he cries out 'oh mother' in his own language.
"The nights were very quiet, so you could hear them crying out... while they were being beaten, or afterwards."
Sources in Kukes suggest that up to 18 prisoners held at the camp were killed.
Just across the border, in Prizren, in western Kosovo, Brankica Antic lights a candle for her husband Zlatko.
A Kosovo Serb, she says he was abducted in July 1999 in Prizren by men in KLA uniforms - six weeks after the end of the war, when Nato-led peacekeepers were well established.
At the Monastery of the Holy Archangel near Prizren, candles are lit for loved ones according to the Serbian Orthodox tradition.
Candles are lit either on the top shelf for the living, or the lower, for the dead. Brankica still lights her candles for Zlatko on the top.
"We always light candles for their health and well-being, and we will continue to do so unless and until their bodies are found, and we know for a fact that they are gone," she says.
Zlatko is one of about 400 Kosovo Serbs who were abducted at the end of the war, and are still missing, according to Family Associations of the Missing in Serbia.
Around 150 are still missing from the war period.
A further 1,500 Kosovo Albanians are still missing from wartime, when Serb security forces carried out many, well-documented atrocities against the majority Albanian population.
Hundreds of bodies were found in mass graves in Serbia. Our investigation shows that KLA fighters, too, were guilty of serious human rights abuses.
That's right, who would have thought that a violent terrorist group like the KLA, backed by gangsters and drug money, would do such a thing?
Many commentators have been highlighting these allegations for a long time, but finally, after ten years, the BBC admits the truth - this conflict was far from black and white, and the good guys, the underdogs, actually turn out to be the villains after all.
I welcome this report, but much more needs to be done to highlight the current plight of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, and work towards a solution which sees at least the Serb-majority areas become part of Serbia.
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